the snagsta blog

We chalked up a major milestone this week and replaced our blackboard pre-alpha site with the real thing. Chalk you can rub out but now we’re committed. We’ve only given access to a handful of people so far - we want to spend a week or two tarting ourselves up first. Because you’re worth it.

The other really exciting news is that we were selected ahead of several startups across Europe to present at Mike Butcher’s inaugural TechCrunch Pitch event last night. The event was hosted in St Anne’s Church in Soho - a misleadingly peaceful venue considering the somewhat hostile audience that included the likes of Doug Richard (ex Dragon’s Den) cast in the Simon Cowell role, London’s top VC’s (DFJ Esprit, Atlas Ventures, Balderton Capital, etc) and some other interesting people like the co-founder of Bebo, Paul Birch (who has incidentally shared his list of favourite business books with Snagsta).

Alex M and I met some really cool entrepreneurs and investors. It was a great night despite the fact that we didn’t win Mr. Butcher’s contest. That honour went to Raphael Arbuz’s fun site: WhatZatSong.

Jan Andresen from weblin, who travelled all the way from Hamburg, stood his ground impressively despite the roasting Doug gave him.

Evgeny Shadchnev has started a great community site for scientists called Kappa Prime.

We met Jay Adair whose business connects his two great passions: photography and motorbikes.

And also Alfie Dennen from moblog, an awesome site that puts mobile video & photos on the web in one easy step, who managed to capture our presentation (be warned the phone video is a little jumpy - but then so was I!).

Today’s list comes from Mike. Concerned by the fact that some start-ups struggle to get their point across, he set up this event to strip things back to basics and get startups to answer the following fundamental questions in just 10 slides (and only 5 minutes!):

1. Problem: what is the market pain, size and how are you measuring it?
   
2. Your solution: You have opportunity to be “the Google/eBay/Skype/iPhone etc of what”?
   
3. Business model (and potential for revenues)
   
4. Underlying magic: Technology / What you are trying to build: how much and for how long?
   
5. Marketing and sales: How will you get distribution?
   
6. Market: Drivers & dynamics / Your positioning and sustainable advantages
   
7. Competition
   
8. Team
   
9. Milestones so far and projections
   
10. Funding requirement & potential exit routes

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I attended NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference this week. Despite the title apparently the only thing jaw-dropping about it was Gordon Brown (who was doing that thing with his chin so quickly even Rory Bremner would have been impressed).

As with all such events it’s a bit hit & miss and one has to make a cost-benefit call. Can an entrepreneur trying to launch his site afford to spend the day nodding sagely in agreement with keynote speakers, nancying around making small talk and drinking lukewarm coffee? Well, the answer is ‘sort of’. At my decisive best I elected to attend the more targeted afternoon sessions and so unfortunately missed Gordon Brown, Bob Geldof & Tim Berners-Lee. But I have it on good authority from the effervescent Meriem Aissaoui from Smarta that they were in fine form.

By the way, Smarta is a fantastic business resource and social networking site for entrepreneurs and small businesses that launches officially in November.

The first seminar I attended was called ‘Are online social networks the new cities?’ Unfortunately the topic was too high level to get the crux of matters the same way blog conversations do but at least it was fairly entertaining. Here’s an extract of the dialogue between the facilitator and Michael Birch (founder of Bebo):

Facilitator: So Michael – why did you move to San Francisco? Was it Silicon Valley?
Michael Birch: Because of my wife - she’s from San Francisco. There just happened to be a small thriving internet community there too.
Facilitator: Lucky she wasn’t in Utah. That would have been interesting.
Michael Birch: Probably not that interesting.

The second seminar, ‘Entrepreneurs v Investors: Can the relationship ever really work?’, was better. Saul Klein (The Accelerator Group) highlighted honesty, self-awareness and the ability to face issues sooner rather than later as critical ingredients for an effective relationship and Jon Moulton (Alchemy) provided a list of habits that help you spot Bad Managers & Entrepreneurs that I have paraphrased below:

1. They don’t know the numbers, don’t care about them
2. They don’t have any customer interaction
3. They are often arrogant and dismiss questions from their staff
4. They are little too focused on the material things (talk about pay & bonus schemes in the first meeting)
5. They don’t have a TO DO list – no signs of structured organisational skills
6. They don’t visit their businesses
7. They make stupid acquisitions (double or quits)
8. They isolate themselves
9. They work 9 to 5 – lacking passion for their business

Investors – if you’re reading this – it’s midnight and I’m still in the office testing the site. This post only took a few minutes. PS: did you get my email about a payrise?

Another interesting point from Jon was that good presenters aren’t necessarily good managers, but people always make this assumption. But on the contrary: good managers are very often good presenters.

The lesson I draw from this is: if you know you’re a crap manager take a course in presentation skills.

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If you’re a regular reader of our humble blog, you may have noticed that we like rivers here at Snagsta. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Alex G’s theory about project management being a bit like white water rafting.

This week we’re picking up comments from recent blog posts from both Nic Brisbourne and Stowe Boyd about slower flowing rivers.

One of the reasons we set up Snagsta was to cut out clutter and help people deal with the perils of information overload. This is why Stowe’s concept of dealing with information such as feeds, news and status updates struck a cord with us here at Snagstaville.

Stowe likens this flow of data to a river of information. Instead of trying to intercept and process it all, he suggests only looking at it when you can and sample what is passing at any given moment.

He goes on to say that you shouldn’t waste time worrying about missing things because if anything’s really important it will be written about later and will therefore flow by again shortly.

Makes a lot of sense to me.

As always, we will sign off with a list. As this week’s topic is a peaceful one, I thought it appropriate that we showcase a complementary list about contentment from the wonderfully content Leo Babauta from Zen Habits.

Peaceful Simplicity: How to Live a Life of Contentment

1. What’s important. First, take a step back and think about what’s important to you. What do you really want to be doing, who do you want to spend your time with, what do you want to accomplish with your work? Make a short list of 4-5 things for your life, 4-5 people you want to spend time with, 4-5 things you’d like to accomplish at work.

2. Examine your commitments. A big part of the problem is that our lives are way too full. We can’t possibly do everything we have committed to doing, and we certainly can’t enjoy it if we’re trying to do everything. Accept that you can’t do everything, know that you want to do what’s important to you, and try to eliminate the commitments that aren’t as important.

3. Do less each day. Don’t fill your day up with things to do. You will end up rushing to do them all. If you normally try (and fail) to do 7-10 things, do 3 important ones instead (with 3 more smaller items to do if you get those three done). This will give you time to do what you need to do, and not rush.

4. Leave space between tasks or appointments. Another mistake is trying to schedule things back-to-back. This leaves no cushion in case things take longer than we planned (which they always do), and it also gives us a feeling of being rushed and stressed throughout the day. Instead, leave a good-sized gap between your appointments or tasks, allowing you to focus more on each one, and have a transition time between them.

5. Eliminate as much as possible from your to-do list. You can’t do everything on your to-do list. Even if you could, more things will come up. As much as you can, simplify your to-do list down to the essentials. This allows you to rush less and focus more on what’s important.

6. Now, slow down and enjoy every task. This is the most important tip in this article. Read it twice. Whatever you’re doing, whether it’s a work task or taking a shower or brushing your teeth or cooking dinner or driving to work, slow down. Try to enjoy whatever you’re doing. Try to pay attention, instead of thinking about other things. Be in the moment. This isn’t easy, as you will often forget. But find a way to remind yourself. Unless the task involves actual pain, there isn’t anything that can’t be enjoyable if you give it the proper attention.

7. Single-task. This is kind of a mantra of mine, as I talk about how to single-task all the time. But it’s an important point for me, and for this article. Do one thing at a time, and do it well.

8. Eat slower. This is just a more specific application of Tip #6, but it’s something we do every day, so it deserves special attention.

9. Drive slower. Another application of the same principle, driving is something we do that’s often mindless and rushed. Instead, slow down and enjoy the journey.

10. Eliminate stress. Find the stressors in your life, and find ways to eliminate them.

11. How and why to slow down. This is such an important point, that I’m going to point you to two other articles on this.

12. Create time for solitude. In addition to slowing down and enjoying the tasks we do, and doing less of them, it’s also important to just have some time to yourself.

13. Do nothing. Sometimes, it’s good to forget about doing things, and do nothing.

14. Sprinkle simple pleasures throughout your day. Knowing what your simple pleasures are, and putting a few of them in each day, can go a long way to making life more enjoyable.

15. Practice being present. You can practice being in the moment at any time during the day.

16. Find inspirations. Learn from the best.

17. Make frugality an enjoyable thing too. Instead of delayed gratification, try enjoying life now while saving for later.

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Uncategorized | My Kayaking Buddies via kwout

Alex G made us laugh during one of our frequent Skype conference calls earlier today. We were catching up on the progress of our technical build and G who is acting at the build’s project manager was reflecting on the joys of his role. He told us that trying to lead the technical team through to launch was akin to trying to steer a raft down an enormous set of white water rapids.

As we now enter calmer waters and edge ever closer to our alpha launch we thought it might be a good time to share some of our key learnings of the project so far – in the form of a list (of course):

1. Work with people you have worked with before and like

2. Play to their strengths – people perform much better when they focus on the tasks they like doing

3. For key requirements hire full-time contractors

4. Reward your team on a deliverables basis

5. Factor in a contingency for production times. Then triple it

6. Let the team set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound objectives

7. If you run in to problems, focus on solutions as a team – finger pointing and shouting achieves very little

8. Manage expectations – yes, it’s an old cliché but it’s also so important

9. Get the right balance of realism and optimism – this is never easy to do as an entrepreneur but vitally important

10. Exercise regularly - even if you’re busy and working hard to meet a deadline – there is no better way to get rid of stress

11. Lastly, take time out to laugh, even when things seem really, really bad

Not sure this is anything like a definitive list but it is perhaps a start of one I will later publish on Snagsta. If you’d like me to add anything I would appreciate suggestions – while you’re at it, a couple of tips for Mr. G on white water rafting would be welcome too!

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Hunter Strategic Solutions via kwout

Okay - maybe they didn’t invest 150 million in Snagsta but I did convince one of the members of the Atomico team (European VC Group) to buy me a mineral water for 150 pence at last week’s Second Chance Tuesday event. We joked that it might not be the last time they put their hands in their pockets for us. The Early Stage Funding Workshop we attended was fantastic. One of the messages that came back from Simon Murdoch (and echoed by the rest of the panel) was: “Don’t raise money!”. For most of us unfortunately that’s not possible (despite the fact that according to Paul Graham setting up a start-up is cheaper and easier than ever before). So as we give away equity in exchange for cash we have to think very carefully about our partners - choosing people (if you have the luxury of choice) whose involvement will add value but not muzzle your creativity. We’ve been very lucky so far (thank you seed investors!). This extends to board members and advisors too. Finding wizened, battle-scarred advisors can really help you avoid mistakes, see things you may have missed, and keep your eye on the ball. Mentors that won’t provide you with all answers, but rather challenge you in ways that’ll help you find them on your own.

There’s a joke my dad likes to tell about board members. It goes something like this: What’s the difference between a non-executive board member and a supermarket trolley? A trolley has a mind of its own and you can get more food and drink into a non-executive.

But it’s a serious subject so I’d like to wind up with a great post on this topic from one of my favourite blogs - “Musings of a VC in NYC” by Fred Wilson.

Thoughts On Choosing Board Members

I am a professional board member. I’ve been sitting on boards for almost 20 years and I’ve seen a lot. I’ve seen some of the best board members in action and have tried to copy them. I’ve seen some of the worst board members in action and have tried hard to forget them.

Here are some thoughts on choosing board members. This advice is for everyone, but it’s of particular use when you are a bigger company, maybe public, and need to fill your board with good people.

1. Avoid “big names” For the most part, they are useless.
2. Select people who will attend each and every meeting, who will pay close attention to the business
3. Select people who have an affinity for your business, who understand your challenges and your opportunities
4. Avoid putting someone you can control on your board. In tough situations they will have a fiduciary duty to do what’s right and you won’t be able to control them when it matters most to you.
5. Don’t let conflicts get in the way of selecting the ideal board member. Conflicts will be disclosed and can be managed. Many times the people who will understand your business best are conflicted in some way. There are ways to deal with this problem.
6. Make sure to have an experienced accountant/auditor on your board and have them run the audit committee. That is no place for amateurs.
7. Make sure to have at least two or three CEOs of comparable companies on your board. Make sure they are on the comp committee. Compensation issues are best handled by people who understand the talent market.
8. Select people who have the time to do the job right. Being a board member is a job. It’s not a retirement perk. If someone cannot commit to attend each and every meeting and to spend at least several hours a week on your company, they are not the right choice.
9. Select people who will get along with each other. The very best boards I am on are friendly social active groups. Serious business doesn’t have to be stilted and formal. It can and should be fun.
10. Above all else, look for great judgment and ethics.

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A long, long time ago bookshops had tiny little shelves with about 5 books on them (Waterstones). The shop assistant either told you what to buy (marketing) or what everyone else was buying (crowd psychology). Some bestsellers became bigger bestsellers simply on the basis of ‘herd mentality’. Along came the digital marketplace (internet) and stuffed another 500 books onto the shelf (Amazon). All of a sudden we had unlimited choice (the Long Tail) and choosing a book started to take forever (especially if you’re me!). ‘Marketing’ & ‘crowd psychology’ became decidedly average selection tools. Fortunately in wandered Web 2.0 with Wikinomics (user generated content & mass collaboration) closely followed by social networking. And suddenly we had the perfect platform to leverage the Wisdom of Crowds. But not the herd-type crowd of days gone by. Rather, a diverse collection of independently-deciding individuals (Facebook friends!?).

Snagsta [enter stage left] wants to use this platform and your networks to help you find things and make decisions without having to trouble people directly with questions. If we can make Snagsta remarkable (Purple Cow) you are more likely to tell your friends about it (The Tipping Point). But just in case the Tipping Point is toast we’ve got a couple of other tricks up our sleeves because you never quite know where your luck is going to come from (The Black Swan).

Now… about choosing that book…

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More - Chris Anderson
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few - James Surowiecki
Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion - N. Goldstein, S. Martin & R. Cialdini
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything – Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams
The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference - Malcolm Gladwell
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking - Malcolm Gladwell
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable - Seth Godin

Too much of this stuff can make you start to take yourself a little too seriously, so to remind you that we’re really just children at heart, buy this book:

The Eye of the Moon - Dianne Hofmeyr
(how about that mom!)

Things are hotting up under the Queenstown Road Arches. We’re a long way from the Golden Arches claim of over 100 billion served but big changes are afoot. Within a week our private alpha site will be up and there’s a real buzz in the air. And its not just the electrified railtracks overhead!

One thing that has really got us revved up is the fact that people have started asking us for lists! They know we’ve been collecting for a while now and so figure we’ve got some good stuff! And they’re right. I’ve just fired off a list of excellent suggestions for a chilled out weekend in Cape Town. And one person asked for a list of no-fail first date hotspots to take girls to in London. So if you find yourself sitting beside my brother Dave in a cozy nook of the Crazy Bear then make sure you keep your wits about you. Of course this warning may already be too late for some!

I was at the Imperial Entrepreneurs event on Tuesday night. Apart from providing the opportunity to drink beer with like-minded people they always seem to attract some great speakers. I am really starting to understand why setting up your own business is so addictive. Stephanie Bouchet, the Global Marketing Director for Joost, shared her 8 tips for an entrepreneur:

1. Think Customer: Integrate them into your organisation.

2. Passion: Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work again!

3. Timing: Like all things in life. As much as there is a bit of luck involved, you also need to trigger it.

4. Creativity: I don’t mean design; I mean creativity with respect to ideas and problem-solving.

5. Learn: Learn from your mistakes and don’t be afraid to fail.

6. Network: In London try 2nd Chance Tuesday / OpenCoffee / EYP / MiniBar

7. Growth: Grow beyond your time spent at work and apply what you learn in the office to life.

8. Have fun!

Of course there’s nothing quite like having a small amount of money to get you working fast and cutting costs. You aren’t a dotcom without some tales of hardship, so… Paul (and his server) is in his spare bedroom, Alex G is in an outhouse in his garden and Alex M and I are in an office under a railway bridge (try conducting a 3 way skype call with a train thundering overhead!).

Expos
We attended the A4U Affiliate Marketing Expo in London in October. The keynote presentation was by the quirky and inimitable Guy Philipson, chairman of the IAB. It was an incredible learning experience, but I still couldn’t help feeling there is something shady about affiliate marketing. There are few people out making a lot of money sitting at home setting up little pointless shell websites they optimize like crazy to promote random products on a short-term basis. It all feels a bit false – nothing like the genuine service we are planning to bring to market in the next few months! There is a more legitimate side to affiliate marketing which we hope to tap into as one of our revenue sources.

Choosing a name
Naming can be a tricky business. It presents your personality to the world. And sometimes determines who you are. If you read this article in the Times http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article2804926.ece you’d know your son would be almost twice as likely to become a dentist if you named him Dennis! As most parents well tell you, it’s much better to name your baby before launch. It’s no different with websites. Except that, unlike children, your company url has to be unique. And since every url is either taken by a working website or being cyber-squatted by thieving gypsies who think buying and selling urls is a legitimate business it makes choosing a name a nightmare. We were desperate to launch our teaser site but simply couldn’t find a name we were all passionate about. In the end we picked 4 options, did a poll and then used hindsight bias to justify our decision!

Logo and Design
Having finally settled on a name we thought the hard part was over. How wrong we were! We’ve just discovered how ‘personal’ design is. Three fickle fellas is certainly not a recipe for success when it comes to logos and design!

And that’s where we are now – six months distilled down to two blogs a couple of paragraphs long. From this point on, we’ll be recording the highs and lows as they happen for all and sundry to pick over.

Next week we’ll look at how blogging influenced our thinking and strategy.

Today’s list…

Great sites that really helped us as we took the entrepreneurial leap

Pickydomains – www.pickydomains.com
If you’re struggling for a name set up a competition on this site.

Sitepoint – www.sitepoint.com
If you’re struggling for a logo or page design set up a competition on this site.

Elance – www.elance.com
Put your web development up for tender on this site. We haven’t used it yet but may use it to get our Facebook app done.

kuler - http://kuler.adobe.com
Great colour resource for your designers.

Web 2.0 design - http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-2.0-design-style-guide.cfm
If you want to make sure your site follows current design best practise.

Companies House - http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/
A critical part of setting up a company. Just remember the website only works 9 to 5…

WordPress – www.wordpress.com
Any aspiring start-up needs a blog where they can start bigging themselves up. No better place than wordpress.

It all started with a SMS.

“G, it’s time 2 start our own dotcom. Let’s do for ourselves what we have been doing for others for the past 10 years.”

Seems Alex M had had an idea brewing in the back of his mind for the last couple of years. A moment of clarity on a recent holiday brought it crashing to the front where he could no longer ignore it. Since work for both of us was “Tim Canterbury” bad, the time seemed ripe. And, it appears, so was the idea (you want to know more right? Watch this space…).

Once he filled me in, things quickly snowballed. We needed to flesh out the idea. Phil was between roles so we talked him flying out to Bangkok (actually we didn’t really have to talk him into this) to meet me. Alex M whipped together the business plan and soon we had a story that developer Paul simply couldn’t resist. Suddenly things started to get pretty serious.

And serious times called for serious money. So Alex M and Phil entered the dark world of venture capital to attempt the dark art of securing investment. I’ll let the two of them take over the story from here…

Yes, fortunately we had at our sides some old hands. Not ours but those of Jack Edmondson (actually he has lovely smooth hands) and Rich Robinson (him, not so much). These chaps have been amazing throughout the last few months. And sometimes they helped us as well (we learnt that a cap table wasn’t a hat-stand by another name!). Thank you guys.

Seeking funding was a fascinating learning experience. At first we went for the big bucks and a high valuation. Fortunately, we failed at this. Enter our first lesson in raising capital: If you want to ultimately hang on to more equity then only raise as much as you need to get proof of concept. You might give away equity at a lower valuation at first but once you’ve proved your idea works the next time you raise money you’ll get a lot more bucks for your bang (thanks Monu!).

We’re probably getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. We raised enough to keep us going for 6-8 months and are working like crazy to prove ourselves right! But enough with the lessons, on a less serious note, to finish this post we’ll leave you with our first list.

8 great reasons to quit the cubicle and set up on your own:

1. You can sign your own leave requests.
2. You can expense EVERYTHING.
3. You get to choose your dress. I’m wearing a lovely two-toned scalloped gown with a matching satin wrap.
4. Flexible working hours. You can work as late as you want!
5. Variety of work. You get to test out new skills. Like filing the annual tax returns.
6. Its offers you an opportunity to fully experience the rich service Companies House offers. The only website we know of that keeps official office hours online.
7. You are no longer making someone else rich. Disclaimer: the corollary isn’t necessarily true!
8. You get to make up imaginary titles for yourself like Chief Imagineer.

Til next week!